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Its been a while, but all is good. The peppers are doing well, and I’ve been making alot of hot sauces and pepper jelly. I’ve also found a new trick to help me store peppers: I keep a mason jar with white vinegar in the fridge, and as I harvest peppers I chop them a few times and throw them in there. This both preserves the peppers and gives a head start to a new batch of hot sauce. A simple sauce recipe would be to chop a couple small onions, a few cloves of garlic, add the mason jar full of peppers and vinegar, and then cook them down over medium heat for about 30 minutes. Then take an immersion blender and puree, after that you can strain the bigger pieces out, put in a mason jar (or and bottle, I use old whiskey bottles) and keep in the fridge. Thats it!

Here are some pictures of my lone Scotch Bonnet plant, it was a late bloomer, but I’m finally getting some ripe pods!

Scotch Bonnets

And here is one of my 7 Pot Jonah plants with an interesting pod, it has a nice stinger! Some have little tails, but this one is the sharpest and most pronounced. A prized pepper indeed.

The pepper farm is flush with peppers, and more are on the way! I’ve been getting good harvests from the older plants (Moruga Scorpion and Naga Morich), and I’m seeing the first pods from a couple of the new plants. I’ve got a few Kung Paos and and a few Hungarian Waxes coming along nicely. I also moved some plants into bigger containers. The Purple Jalapenos are looking absolutely majestic, I can’t wait to let them flower once they get a little bigger. I’ve also been making some small batches of hot sauce, I’ll do a dedicated post on that once I get a good recipe down. That’s my update for now, check out the photos below!

Stay Spicy!

Here’s my first big harvest of the season, most of the scorpions went into a sriracha style hot sauce

Here is a few shots of the “purplest” Purple Jalapeno, it’s stunning

My lone Scotch Bonnet is looking good as well, here you can see I’m going with the Dollar General reusable shopping bags as my grow bags. For $1 a piece, I can’t find a better option.

And now, some of the first pods from the new varieties, Kung Pao and Hungarian Wax (respectively)

I’m gonna keep the word count low and the pixel count high today. Not much to say really, all the pepper plants are doing great. The old plants are starting to produce ripe peppers, some of the new ones are in larger containers, but most are still in solo cups. I’ll need to repot again soon.

Well chile peeps, its time to get a count of the plants. All have sprouted that will sprout, so we’ll grow what we got. My 2nd batch of seeds wasn’t as bountiful as the first. I let the jiffy pods get a little drier than I should have, but I still have at least one of all varieties I planted, so I’m ok with it.

Here is the official census of April 2015:

Kung Pao: 4

Chocolate Fatalii: 4

Purple Jalapeno: 4

Trinidad Moruga Scorpion (overwintered): 2

Naga Morich (overwintered): 2

7 pot Jonah: 2

Trinidad Doughlah: 2

Pablano: 2

Golden Cayenne: 2

Jalapeno (overwintered): 1

Thai Bird: 1

Hungarian Wax: 1

Peruvian Aji: 1

Scotch Bonnet: 1

That’s 29 total plants! I should have my hands full this season to say the least.

The older overwintered plants are doing fine as well, they continue to grow, but the ones that I didn’t prune back have a lingering spider mite infestation. It doesn’t seem to be seriously affecting the plant growth, but I’m trying to get rid of them either way. I’ve sprayed them down a few times with a mixture of Dr Bronner’s peppermint soap and water. The mites hate the soap, or so I’ve heard. They also hate moist environments, and we just had a whole week of rain, so here’s hoping they don’t stick around. Below you can see a hint of webbing:

Here’s a shot of the first round of new plants:

And here I put the finest examples of each variety up front, from left to right they are: Thai Bird, Hungarian Wax, Kung Pao, Chocolate Fatalii, 7 Pot Jonah, and Trinidad Doughlah

I’ve got the 3 new Purple Jalapenos, and a baby Scotch Bonnet for your viewing pleasure as well:

I’ll probably need to start pruning/topping the largest new plants soon, and then start potting them up into their permanent containers. And then deciding which ones I need to put up for adoption, 29 plants is alot of mouths to feed!

As you’ve already seen if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, I’ve re-potted the peppers into solo cups. I cut a few little holes in the bottom of good ol red solo cups and use a mix of potting soil and perlite (helps the soil not get too moist) as a growing medium. This is an in between stage until they move into their final homes. I’m keeping them indoors for another week or so, to let them settle in to the new digs, then I’ll start hardening them off. Hardening off is basically just slowing introducing them to the outside world. You start with about 30 minutes of sun, then the next day, an hour, and so on.

Here are some before/after pictures of the re-potting, note that only one of the Purple Jalapenos (left-most column) sprouted, and it was weeks after the others. I have multiple of all other varieties.

I also have been able to leave the mature plants outside, as spring is in full swing here. I did prune one of the Moruga Scorpions and one of the Naga Moriches. I left 2 un-pruned so we can compare, the pruned plants should ultimately be more bushy, and perhaps produce more fruit. We shall see.

Pre-pruning:

Pruned plant

The pruning allows light to reach the lower parts of the plant, and encourages new growth there. Notice in the before picture there is a nice canopy of leaves at the top. This blocks light from the lower part of the plant. We should see new branches form lower on the pruned plant in a couple weeks.

I have also just sewed the seeds for the 2nd batch. Since the Purple Jalapeno’s from Pepper Joe didn’t sprout, I got some from Baker Seeds. I also got some Golden Cayenne seeds from them, and i have some Scotch Bonnets and Peruvian Ajis from pepperlover.com as well as some Pablanos from Burpee. Its going to be a crowded farm this season! But I like it!

Thanks for reading, I keep Instagram and Twitter updated with some good stuff every couple days, so give me a follow!

Just a quick update, but an exciting one. I have, as I write this, about a dozen seedlings that have popped up! Kung Paos are in the lead with 6, next up is Chocolate Fatalii with 4, the a couple Garden Birds, and one 7 Pod Jonah.

I removed the top of the greenhouse, as it seems like the condensation was dripping from the lid onto the seedlings and weighing them down. I put the whole tray under a set of fluorescent lights, which should help them grow up enough until they are ready to do outside.

I’ll post another update once more start popping up! Keep an eye on the Twitter and Instagram accounts as well!